


Not As Planned

by Haywire



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Swearing, Violence, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 04:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/pseuds/Haywire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a mission of corporate espionage to retrieve chemical goods, things do not go as planned. The fates conspire against a would be corporate spy and he unwittingly unleashes a zombie apocalypse. Whoops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not As Planned

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Undead Big Bang on LJ. Art by tiggeratl1, check it out here: <http://tigs-playground.livejournal.com/9225.html>

Things had not gone as planned.

 

Staccato bursts of gunfire punctuated Jacob Benson‘s thought. The automatic weapon’s angry outbursts were overwhelmed by the howls and moans of the undead creatures that had them surrounded. Benson and two other persons - his associate, Kayla Anderson, and their mutual acquaintance, known to both as simply Ghost - found themselves cornered on the roof of a skyscraper.

 

It was Ghost wielding the firearms, a pair of handheld UZIs that barked loudly at a nearby trio of assailants before felling them. She then whipped to her right, spraying another pair of combatants before the weapons fell silent. Without missing a beat, she reached over her shoulder and with both hands withdrew her sword from its scabbard.

 

Her movements a blur, Ghost closed the gap between her and her enemies in the blink of an eye and had decapitated them both with one efficient arc of her blade. Another attacker shared the same fate a heartbeat later on a follow up swing before she dashed back to Benson and Anderson.

 

“Where the hell is our evac?” she yelled while looking around for the inevitable arrival of the next assault. “They should’ve been here ten minutes ago!”

 

Benson, unarmed like Kayla beside him, waved his hands frantically.

 

“I don’t know! They said they’d be here!”

 

“Just give them some more time, they’ll be here, you’ll see!” Kayla chimed in, stepping closer to Benson while keeping an eye out in the direction opposite Ghost. Anderson, who had previously been armed, had long since spent her ammunition, having even thrown her firearm in a desperate - and successful - bid to escape a would be captor earlier in the fracas.

 

As if on cue a new horde burst through the rooftop entrance Benson had previously barricaded. They were close enough to get a better look and, as much as he’d wanted to avoid a closer examination, it was impossible not to notice what they’d been fighting.

 

For lack of a better term, each of their attackers appeared to be zombies. Benson hated to even think the word. Such things simply did not exist. Could not exist. Yet there they were, not more than ten feet away from them. From a distance they looked human, and surely they had been human at one point in time, but closer examination revealed otherwise. The eyes were what haunted him the most; unfocused, lolling to and fro in their lifeless sockets. To describe such a thing would’ve sounded almost comical to him had he not seen it, but in person it was a chilling spectacle. The skin of the creatures was pale, near translucent on what appeared to be the older specimens, and on some of them their flesh was missing in patches here and there, bone and rotting sinew alike visible.

 

The worst part, however, was their scent. It was an overpowering stench, strong enough to make Benson’s eyes water, even from what seemed to be a safe distance. The most recent zombie he’d encountered face to face had nearly been his last because of it, in fact. The combination of shock as his brain tried to process what he’d seen and the physical reaction to the offensive odour forced him to double over, retching on the floor, and the zombie had gotten within a hand’s breadth of him. Had it not been for Ghost’s intervention he’d likely be dead, or worse, one of them.

 

Snapping back to the present, Benson shook his head and leaned back against Kayla. They both watched as Ghost quickly dispatched of the three zombies, their sticky blood added to the already grotesque mixture on her blade.

 

Benson shielded his eyes as her sword suddenly began to glow. It took him a second or two to realize that it was the reflection of a spotlight shining in his eyes off of the tempered steel. Their helicopter had arrived, and the sound of its whirring blades overrode the keening of the dead as it lowered closer to the rooftop.

 

“Thank god!” He moved as one with Kayla, running for the rope ladder that descended from the aircraft.

 

“God had no hand in this, I can promise you that.” Ghost muttered. She remained back on to them, hacking down a few more zombies that had rushed them as they aimed to depart. “Go on, hurry up, or else you’ll be thanking him in person!”

 

Benson bit his tongue and did as she asked, helping Anderson climb the ladder first before scrambling up right after her. “We’re aboard, come on, let’s go!” He reached into the cockpit and tapped the pilot on the shoulder, flashing him the sign for ‘ok’ to get them moving, knowing that their comrade below would be joining them momentarily.

 

As Benson had anticipated, Ghost grabbed ahold of the ladder as it began to ascend out of reach of the zombies below and they off into the sky. He slumped back against the wall and tried to fathom just how the whole operation had gone south so quickly.

 

Two hours earlier...

 

Their mission was a simple one, and not unlike many they’d undertaken before. Infiltrate, extract, and extricate. Infiltrate the headquarters of a rival corporation in order to steal information, extract the said information and destroy any record of it from the competitor, and extricate themselves from the area before they got caught or worse. It was their job, and they were rewarded handsomely for it.

 

Jacob had been in the employ of JudasTech for just shy of ten years. Its auspicious name came from its creator, Simon Leary, who had once been employed by another large technology corporation, TrinityCorp, up until a particularly nasty falling out with the latter company’s CEO, Dennis Christopher. Urban legend had it that Leary accused Christopher of having a messiah complex, believing that he and he alone could save the company from what Christopher perceived as its shortcomings. Things got very nasty and, after several years of expensive and dragged out litigation, Leary was finally able to launch his rival company, complete with its tongue planted firmly in cheek name.

 

Benson had initially come aboard as a low level programmer, where he remained unnoticed for several years. While it wasn’t the most rewarding job in the world it paid the bills, so he didn’t complain. He kept his head down and punched the clock, doing his work and slogging through life like he assumed the rest of the world was doing.

 

Things changed when the company implemented a new health policy. The policy required each of them to go through a fitness examination, including taking a sample of their blood work. While the policy was not mandatory per se for legal purposes, the perks for volunteering to take part were so great that no one could really afford to turn it down. Employees that passed were rewarded with free health insurance and various other perks - as long as they maintained their health, of course - while those who did not pass were provided with both the economic and practical means to improve their condition.

 

Jacob had passed, much to his surprise, however a further meeting had been requested after his examination. Fearing potential termination for refusal, whether it’d be legal or not, he consented. After all he had no fiscal means to appeal such a dismissal through the appropriate legal channels, so he’d had no real say in the matter.

 

When he arrived at the meeting, held at one of the top levels of the company’s skyscraper to which he’d never been before, Benson was greeted by a surprise. The lone person waiting for him in the massive boardroom was none other than Simon Leary himself. He explained to Jacob that there had been a secret purpose to obtaining the blood work of his employees, namely that of collecting data for one of the company’s top secret projects. That project’s goal was to discover and research a unique genetic fingerprint and the resulting effect it had on those individuals that possessed it. Benson turned out to be one of those extremely rare people, as it turned out, one of just a handful of such persons in the company’s entire number of employees. Considering that the company was a multinational global empire of sorts, which had several hundred thousand employees worldwide, it was a pretty impressive distinction.

 

The program had detected a beneficial mutation in Jacob’s genetic code, one that not even he himself was aware he’d possessed. Its function was to allow Jacob a moderate degree of invisibility, as it were; he didn’t actually become invisible but if he didn’t want to be noticed then he blended in the background to such a degree that nobody knew he was there. It might have been a vestigial survival skill that had somehow been reactivated in his genetic code, some sort of psychic mechanism that afforded its wielder a defence to any stronger, smarter predators. Whatever it had once been, it was no longer dormant for Jacob. He was able to control it to some degree, on a subconscious level prior to the discovery, and actively since then. allowing himself to be seen and noticed whenever he wanted, but by default he was hard to notice at the best of times and whenever he actively wanted to be unnoticed he was virtually invisible to nearly all the human senses. Touch was the one sense that couldn’t be completely fooled, but as long as he remained quiet and out of the way of whomever he was trying to evade then they wouldn’t even realize he was there.

 

With his consent - which, again, was not something he really could have reasonably withheld at that point and time - he was submitted to further studies and trained in secret by Simon Leary and JudasTech until he was deemed ready.

 

It was then that Jacob Benson was introduced into the world of corporate espionage.

 

His team consisted of just two other people. There was Kayla Anderson, another fellow employee but from one of the west coast branches, a slight brunette who was quieter than Jacob himself to his surprise, and another blonde woman who they only knew as Ghost.

 

Kayla’s mutation granted her a form of technopathy, allowing her to interact with computers and “speak” to them in a fashion. Given the digitization of information and how prevalent computers were, her abilities made her a formidable asset to what Benson had come to term the Black Ops division of the company. On more than one occasion she’d been able to extract terabytes of data from the most heavily protected of machines, the speed of which was limited only by the upper level of speed the date could be physically copied to a memory stick or portable hard drive.

 

Compared to his and Kayla’s abilities, Ghost was on the opposite end of the spectrum. Her role was that of the muscle of the group, and while she wasn’t always needed on a mission the times that she was called in had proved her as invaluable. Her mutation greatly enhanced her strength, agility, and stamina, leaving her virtually peerless when it came to hand to hand combat, not to mention she’d already been a security guard with a deadeye shot before coming into her abilities. They’d recruited her from the warehouse security of a JudasTech subsidiary overseas in the United Kingdom, and while she wore her preference for homeland on her sleeve she’d been paid well enough for her services to keep her on this side of the pond.

 

The three of them proved themselves to be an exceptionally effective unit. Both Jacob and Kayla were quiet yet effective at their jobs. Being able to blend into any situation gave Benson access to virtually anywhere he wanted to be, having only to take precautions for any video surveillance or sophisticated locks and the like. Even if a place was locked down tight he’d be able to either acquire any passwords or keys from eavesdropping on people or by taking them when they weren’t looking. Part of his training had focused on his manual dexterity and improving his sleight of hand, turning him into a moderately effective pick pocket to compliment his talents for being exceptionally unremarkable. Those times when he couldn’t easily gain access, or in cases where the technology was too elaborate for his gifts, Kayla would be tapped to take the lead.

 

Some missions required only Jacob or Kayla alone, with Ghost ready and waiting on backup; those they termed Code Green missions, with Code Yellow ones requiring both Jacob and Kayla together and Ghost waiting in the wings, and Code Red ones having all three thrown into play at the same time. The vast majority of their operations were green, and Jacob and Kayla split them up between them where they could as they became available, unless the mission parameters specifically called for one of their specific skillsets. Once every few months a yellow mission would be called for, and they usually had one or more weeks of preparation before entering the field for those. The red missions were the most rare of their jobs, the unit only having had gone out on one once previously. That mission had required nearly a year’s worth of planning and training, and had been a veritable nightmare, involving them trying to breach the security of TrinityCorp. It was during that mission that they had discovered that JudasTech was not the only corporation with a Black Ops division, and they had fought tooth and nail against other talented persons not unlike themselves. Ever since that fiasco each and every mission involved an extensive and exhaustive research into the target’s own espionage division to evaluate the chance of running into such a situation again.

 

Their current mission had been originally categorized as a green one before they realized what they were up against. The target, Daedalus Pharmaceuticals, was a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, so not much resistance had been anticipated, and first it was going to be up to Kayla to acquire what was needed on her own. Further research, the kind now required since the TrinityCorp job, revealed that a private security firm had been retained by the company, whose members happened to include some previous employees from TrinityCorp’s security detail. That red flag was enough to immediately turn it into a yellow mission in the eyes of the higher ups, with the team itself agreeing amongst themselves to treat it more like a red one. While Ghost wouldn’t be going in with them directly as she would if it was classified as the most dangerous form of operation, she made sure she was ready and waiting for orders within a one minute travel time from the building just in case.

 

For the preceding week, Anderson had been working in the building under an undercover alias, having obtained a job as an executive assistant with the company. She’d managed to obtain several entry codes and passwords over that period of time to allow them access to the various parts of the facility they’d need to enter in order to accomplish their mission. Due to the company’s internal security practices those codes would only be valid for approximately one week, so they’d have to make a move quickly unless they wanted to wait for her to collect information all over again.

 

The plan was to strike on a Friday night, with the vast majority of the building’s occupants home for the weekend and a hopefully minimal amount of security left to defend the structure. There were two tasks for them to accomplish: the first was in Kayla’s domain, namely to copy a vast amount of information from the company’s network onto the portable hard drive she’d brought with her, which wouldn’t take much longer than the time required to copy the files over. The second part was Benson’s job, which involved physically removing several samples of a substance the company was developing, and to replace them with another material they’d been provided with for the task. The second part of his duties fell more in line with sabotage than espionage but it hadn’t been the first time that they’d crossed that line.

 

Kayla had stayed late after work, explaining to her boss and her co-workers that she had so much left to catch up on and how could she possibly enjoy her weekend with that hanging over her head? They’d laughed and believed her, leaving her behind while they fled for home without a second thought. Using a keycard she’d swiped and had encoded with additional security clearances, it didn’t take her more than five minutes to access the elevator and travel to the necessary server room for her task. Kayla had waited for nearly two hours after everyone had left, waiting until the agreed upon time of eight o’clock before leaving her desk. She then headed to the server room and hooked up the micro external hard drive she’d brought along for copying the data they wanted. Doing so would eventually alert the office’s owners that they’d been compromised, and the best she could do was to delay the discovery of her deception for approximately thirty minutes, forty tops, before the notification went out. Disabling the network’s security altogether would have been discovered quicker than that, and her method of delaying the system’s security protocols with the various tricks she’d hacked into the system was the best she could do in such a short period of time.

 

At eight o’clock Benson slipped into the building, going wholly unnoticed by the personnel at the security desk inside the lobby. He had been provided with his own security keycard to allow him access to the elevator and the offices of the building, which he swiped in the appropriate slot next to the elevators once he’d reached them. Slung over his right shoulder was a specially designed insulated courier bag, containing several vials of the material his employers wanted him to leave behind and allowing him to return the Daedalus Pharmaceutical vials they wanted in the same slots.

 

The elevator arrived and Benson walked in, reaching over and hitting the button for the eighth floor where the laboratory was located. Kayla’s intel report had revealed that there should just be one person at the security post between six o’clock and ten o’clock, the latter time marking a general security shift for the whole building. At that time there’d be at least two people on the overnight team, but the six to ten shift was the one block where only one person was posted there. He assumed the reasoning was there were more persons on security downstairs at that time and they in turn would lessen in numbers overnight, requiring additional security in the lab section, but for their purposes it was a great window of opportunity through which to strike. Fighting off an urge to whistle a happy tune, Benson instead just leaned against the far wall of the elevator and waited for the doors to close.

 

Just before the elevator doors finally did close a man ran towards him, causing Jacob to take a deep breath as he watched the man stick his hand between the metal slabs before they could completely close. The elevator dinged and the doors pulled open again, allowing the man to enter. He was taller than Jacob, garbed in one of the building’s security team uniforms, and he had a strong muscular build. Strapped to one hip was what Benson assumed was a standard issue firearm, with a nightstick on the other hip. His name tag read “Johnson” and the man, who appeared to have been running late for his shift, straightened the tag with one hand while repeatedly pounding the button for the eighth floor with the other. The same floor to which Benson was headed, though in Johnson’s rush he thankfully hadn’t noticed that the button had already been pressed.

 

“C’mon, c’mon, hurry the fuck up.” The guard looked up as the floor numbers slowly changed as the elevator car ascended. He looked at his watch, tapping his foot as he did so. “Stupid fucking subway running late, why does this always happen to me?” Johnson exhaled and stretched his arms out, causing Benson to duck and bend down into the corner of the elevator. The car wasn’t much bigger than six feet by six feet so the infiltrator wasn’t left with that much room to work with in terms of avoidance.

 

Benson’s own eyes turned up to the display, watching the light move from four to five to six. It felt like the longest elevator ride in his life though if Johnson stayed right where he was then it’d be alright. He held his breath and remained as still and as quiet as was humanly possible.

 

Just as the floor indicator hit seven the guard lifted his left leg and let out some nasty flatulence, his posterior not more than six inches away from Benson’s face at the time. Johnson snorted at his actions, then sniffed and scowled at the results.

 

“Good god damn, what did I have for supper again? That’s nasty.” He reached down to wave the scent away, almost hitting Jacob in the process.

 

Benson, who had nowhere else to go in the car, fought with every fibre in his being not to scream in disgust at the pig standing in front of him. He was starting to feel light headed, having already held his breath out of nervousness before now having to hold it out of necessity, and it hadn’t been an especially deep breath in the first place. He hadn’t counted on, well, that happening, but then again who could have possibly done so?

 

The ding indicating they’d reached the eighth floor sounded, and the doors opened not a moment too soon. Due to his own pollution of the elevator car the security guard made a quick exit out of the same, clearing his throat and coughing as he did so. Benson was quick to leap to his feet and exit as soon as the other man made room, taking a deep, deep breath once he was outside the confined, contaminated space. He had to lean against the wall for a few moments to calm the dizziness he’d had, which was just as well as it gave the security team time to change.

 

Benson frowned and thought about that again. If the guard wasn’t scheduled to change until ten o’clock, which Kayla had assured them was the case, then why was this Johnson fellow arriving there now? It didn’t make sense.

 

His wind finally returned, Benson moved off of the wall and started down the hallway towards the lab. Another swipe of his keycard granted him access to the area, where he saw not one but two guards in the security area. One was Johnson, the man he’d just been in the elevator with, who was standing by a filing cabinet examining a calendar hanging above it, and the other was an older, portlier man, maybe in his fifties, who sat heavily in a swivel chair and was apparently in the middle of a late supper. Half eaten fast food was spread out messily on the desk in front of him, paperwork pushed off to one side in order to give him enough room to eat.

 

“So who called you in again?” The seated man asked, still eating while he talked in an exercise of bad manners.

 

“Steers, he told me he had this shift and traded with me for tomorrow. I’ve got a softball game tomorrow so we swapped so I could make it.” Johnson sighed, letting the calendar fall back down. “But you’re sure that you’re supposed to be here, Collins?”

 

“Swear on my mother’s life.” Collins raised his right hand, fork still grasped between his fingers.

 

“Your mother’s dead, isn’t she?” Johnson deadpanned.

 

“Ya got me there, heh.” The man snorted and then resumed eating. “Anyway, you can go on home, I got this.”

 

“No way, I am not working tomorrow, that’s why I made this deal in the first place.”

 

“Same here, I’ve got poker tomorrow night and Steers is ‘sposed to cover that too.”

 

“That little bastard.” Johnson sighed, taking his hat off and running his fingers through his hair. “Alright, well, fuck this. I’m not going home. The company can just pay for us both I guess.”

 

“That’s the spirit kid!” Collins laughed deeply, a strange enough guttural sound made worse by the fact that he was still eating while doing it. “I call dibs on the desk duty, but if you want to patrol around or something, fill your boots.”

 

Benson swore in his head, nearly doing so out loud before catching himself. It shouldn’t make things all that more complicated for him but it certainly wasn’t going to make his job any easier. Having mobile security while he wandered about inside the lab just meant he’d have to be more careful than anticipated was all.

 

Taking a flashlight off of the wall, Johnson chatted with Collins for another few seconds before wandering off down one of the hallways, shining his light here and there as he strolled. With someone actively looking for anything of the ordinary Benson would have to concentrate harder to keep his veil up, but as long as he did just that it’d be ok.

 

There were two hallways twenty feet apart on either side of the security desk that extended approximately one hundred feet down before meeting in the back again, with several labs and offices branching off at various intervals along the way. Benson headed down the one the guard hadn’t and began his search.

 

The schematics he’d studied told him that the lab for which he was looking was located at the end of the hallways, right in the dead center of the space between both hallways at the end of the floor. Benson made his way there as quickly as he could without making any noise, which wasn’t nearly as fast as he would’ve liked, but he wanted to get there before Johnson did.

 

Rounding the corner, he saw that he’d in fact beaten the other man to the short hallway. Curiosity got the better of him and Benson went down to the other end, peering up the other long hall. The guard was about half way down, having apparently stopped at each door to shine his light inside and check out the contents.

 

Retreating back to his destination, Jacob swiped his keycard in the appropriate location and this time entered the secondary code in a keypad beneath the card slot. After a few heartbeats where he thought they’d changed the codes the door slid open, hissing slightly as it did so. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed Johnson still hadn’t reached his location and Benson darted inside, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as the door hissed shut behind him.

 

The lab ceiling had several pot lights that remained on at all times, albeit at a dimmer level in the evenings, so it didn’t take too long for his eyes to acclimate to the difference in light levels. Checking his watch, he saw that it was 8:08 pm. Kayla should have been transferring her files already so he got straight to work himself, removing the courier bag from his shoulder as he walked further into the lab.

 

His instructions had been clear. Once inside the lab he’d find several refrigeration units lining the walls. The one he was looking for was in the back right of the room, and it would be locked with another digital lock that required an eight digit code. Kayla had obtained this for him as well and he spied the unit easily, the keypad making it stand out amongst the other units. He walked over with his bag in one hand, punching in the code once he reached the freezer. It beeped and a little light flashed green, allowing him to open the door, which he then did.

 

Inside there were several rows of seemingly identical vials of liquid, one after another. He had been assured that it didn’t matter which ones he chose to take, as long as the codes on the vials matched his intended target. To that end, he plucked one of the tubes from its holder and held it up to his cell phone which he’d also taken from his pocket. An application he’d launched on the device scanned the bar code on a label affixed to the vial and deciphered its information for him. Benson nodded as he read the translated information, confident that this was what he’d been sent to retrieve.

 

The temperature inside the freezer was well below freezing, and when he’d removed the vial into the room temperature lab condensation had begun to form on the glass material. It slipped in his fingers as he moved to return it to the freezer, and in order to prevent it from falling and presumably shattering on the hard laboratory floor Benson had to let go of his cell phone to grasp the vial with both hands. His phone fell with a loud clatter to a desk beneath him, though he’d managed to hang onto the vial.

 

He stood still for several seconds before moving or even breathing again, and then when he was confident he hadn’t blown his cover Jacob opened his courier bag and began swapping out vials. For each vial he removed from the freezer he placed one of the ones he’d brought along in its slot.

 

There was a hissing noise as the lab door opened again, and Johnson appeared in the entrance to the lab. He was shining his light around and Benson stopped what he was doing, one of each vial in his hands while he concentrated extra hard on not being seen. It worked flawlessly, which was no surprise to Benson but was a great relief. Johnson swept his light around once more and turned to leave.

 

That was when Benson’s phone began to ring.

 

He hadn’t left his ringer on, because that would’ve been just plain stupid. In fact, he’d turned the phone off, only having had to turn it back on to scan the vial to make sure it was the right one. Dropping it prevented him from turning it back off, however, and while the ringer wasn’t activated the face of it still lit up whenever he received a call.

 

Of course it had landed front side up on the lab floor, the bright LED display lighting up the floor and walls of the lab.

 

The guard whipped out his gun with one hand, looking around as pounded out with his other hand to punch the light switch on.

 

“WHO’S THERE? COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”

 

The combination of nervousness at being made plus the condensation having built up on the one vial from the freezer still in his hand made Benson’s grip slip once again. This time there was no catching the vial, and in his reaction to stoop down to try and catch it anyway he dropped the replacement vial as well.

 

Both vials smashed on impact, their contents mixing as they ran over the ground towards a nearby grate on the ground. Vapor rose from the areas where they intersected, pinkish in hue and as thick as fog.

 

Johnson’s gun blared to life as he fired a round towards the location of the sound. Thankfully for Benson he’d already ducked in his futile attempt to catch the vials and the shot slammed into the wall where he’d been standing mere moments ago.

 

Fuck Fuck FUCK! Benson scurried to the side, his concentration completely blown now, leaving him visible to the guard who pivoted and trained his gun on him.

 

“STOP!” Johnson was already pulling the trigger as he yelled, but fortunately for Benson his aim was off from swinging his body around to level against the intruder. The bullet whizzed well wide of its intended target, punching a hole into a refrigeration unit that caused it to hiss loudly and expel a white mist in Johnson’s direction.

 

Benson took advantage of the momentary distraction to charge the guard, throwing all his weight behind a tackle aimed at the man’s center of gravity. Both of them flew back towards the lab wall, with the guard taking the brunt of the impact as he came up solid against the hard surface. It winded Benson momentarily but at least he hadn’t lost consciousness. By now however Collins would surely be on his way down the hall, so he scooped up Johnson’s gun where it lay and braced himself for further confrontation. He also retrieved his phone, not bothering to turn it off now that the cat was out of the bag.

 

Collins didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to arrive, but Benson remained where he was. The guard might have been laying in wait for him to come out into the narrow hallway where he’d be easy pickings, so he used the doorway as a choke point himself and wait for the guard to get there. He couldn’t stay there indefinitely, of course, since back up was surely on its way, but if he stayed long enough to calm down he would have a much better chance of reactivating his concealment abilities and he could slip back out under their noses.

 

It was then that he looked back at the spilled contents of the vials. They were frothing and hissing where they lay on the floor, with several rivulets of the mixed materials spilling out around the lab. He made sure not to touch any of it, since he had no idea what he’d unleashed, and he began to wish he’d had a gas mask of some sort. The plumes of gas that spewed out from the pool were now being sucked up by a fan in the ceiling of the lab. Benson figured that they had installed such devices in case of an incident just like this, or something similar to it anyway. Not all of it was going out that way, however; on closer inspection the guard’s first shot had perforated an air conditioning duct attached to the wall, blowing a fist sized hole in the material. A large offshoot of the fumes were being pulled into that conduit, which was presumably dispersing it throughout the building.

 

Benson gulped, wondering just what exactly the materials were. More importantly, he wondered what the new agent he’d been replacing the vials with would do to the original substance. Whatever the answer to that question was, which was well beyond him, it was too late to do anything about it now. There was also the matter of the liquids remaining on the floor, which he now realized was expanding and spreading further across the floor. It was pouring into the drain but the surplus material it was producing was too much for the little drain to fully handle, so it continued to expand through the room.

 

That settled it, Benson thought. He had to move now or never. Steeling his nerves, he tried to calm down as much as he could before leaving the room. He looked down to see where the liquid was moving to plan his escape, which was when he noticed it surrounding Johnson’s prone figure on the ground across the lab.

 

He’d been pretty sure that the guard was just knocked out and not dead, but there was a pool of blood collecting underneath his head that was now glaringly obvious as it too spread out. Benson looked to the wall and saw the heater sticking out of it, the sharp corner of which had apparently been the point of contact for the base of Johnson’s skull. Wincing, Benson lowered his head and crossed himself. Though not really a religious person he figured the situation called for it.

 

Then Johnson’s corpse did something he didn’t expect. It moved.

 

It moved ever so slightly at first, with his legs twitching for a few seconds before stopping. Benson had read about dead bodies sometimes doing that, something to do with residual electrical impulses in the brain or something like that. Random facts about the fingernails and hair of the deceased growing for some time after death popped into his mind and he just shook it off as a freak occurrence. Then its arms started moving, this time with the legs. Before he could rationalize this too the guard’s mouth opened and emitted a low, guttural growl.

 

If he’d been freaked out before, Jacob was really freaked out now. He backed up and banged into another freezer unit but attempts at staying quiet were long forgotten by now.

 

The corpse slowly shambled to its feet, its dead eyes unfocused but still turning towards its killer. The guard’s arms reached up and, with another moan, it turned and moved towards him.

 

It only took a moment or two for Benson to raise the gun and fire. He had received some basic firearms training after accepting this position but the vast majority of that part of the job was left to Ghost. His first shot hit the guard in his shoulder, throwing that side of his body backward a little but otherwise having no effect. Forcing himself to calm down as much as he could, he re-aimed and fired another shot straight at its forehead. This time the guard’s body went limp and collapsed to the ground, its blood splattered behind it across the all white lab equipment.

 

Benson didn’t hesitate another second as he all but ran out of the lab, nearly slipping on the mixture of Johnson’s blood and whatever the hell he’d unleashed on the world from those vials on the floor. He caught himself on the doorframe and continued out the hallway, retreating down the same side he’d first come down.

 

As he ran he saw a safety station on one of the walls that he hadn’t taken note of before. There was an eyewash station, a hand soap dispenser, and, what really caught his eye, a gas mask behind a glass panel. Pulling his hand up into the sleeve of his jacket, Jacob pulled back and smashed the panel, busting the glass and extruding the mask from its case. He nearly slashed his fingers on the glass as he yanked the mask out but he didn’t care, all he was concerned about was not breathing in whatever the hell those fumes he’d made were. Strapping the mask onto his face he realized that the air conditioning was going full tilt in the hallway ahead of him, and that the pinkish mist he’d seen earlier was hovering throughout the air and heading his way.

 

Within the mist he saw something else. It was the other guard, Collins, who was still seated in his chair but was wheeling his way down the hallway towards Benson and the noise he’d made in breaking the glass. The guard was as pale as the institutional white walls that surrounded them both, and his eyes were as dead and empty as Johnson’s had been. His face was smothered in whatever he’d been eating earlier, which appeared to be some sort of barbecue dish, but in this light it looked more like blood.

 

The man growled when he saw Benson, wheeling faster towards the man. The mist flowed all around him and above him, whirling through the air as if it was carrying the dead guard through the ether.

 

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit...” Jacob raised the revolver once again, squeezing off two shots at the guard. It was a strange angle and there was considerably more room between him and this guard than there’d been with Johnson so his first shot missed the creature’s head, burying deep inside its belly instead. A living target would’ve been stopped dead in its tracks but the guard kept on rolling, until the second shot found its mark. It wasn’t as clean as the kill shot on Johnson had been but it was enough to damage its brain and while the chair kept rolling under its previous momentum the guard was no longer pushing it further ahead.

 

Benson stood transfixed at the sight for a few seconds before retreating and heading back towards the other hallway. The mist was everywhere now and he was thankful he’d been able to find a mask. He headed for the elevator and pounded on the open button before remembering he’d have to swipe his keycard to open the doors first. He swiped it and then felt his phone in his pocket as he replaced his card.

 

That was when he remembered Kayla and Ghost. Their plan was to meet on the rooftop of the building for an extraction by helicopter. Benson checked his watch. It was 8:23, seven minutes until extraction. He’d missed his check in time of 8:20, which meant that Ghost was hopefully entering the building herself to investigate. Kayla should have been on the roof long ago, unless she’d run into trouble as well, but there were no messages on his phone to indicate that. Curiosity made him check his missed call list to see who the hell had called him, and he laughed out loud when he saw it was his mother.

 

The elevator arrived and dinged before the door opened. He took a step back just in case but it was empty. Exhaling, he got inside and hit the button for the rooftop, swiping his card again since it required authorization to access that level.

 

When the door opened he was greeted by another security guard, or what had once been a guard. It growled loudly and lunged into the enclosed space, reaching out and grabbing Benson.

 

“AHHH SHIT!” He fired the gun twice, both shots penetrating the frame of the zombie but not slowing it down in the least. Benson tried aiming the gun at its head but when he pulled the trigger the weapon just clicked over and over. He was out of ammo. All he could do was push back and wrestle with the monster and pray for a swift, merciful death.

 

During the wrestling with his assailant the strap to his mask got tangled up in his shirt, becoming loose in the process to the point where it slackened and slid down his face, hanging around his neck. The stench of the zombie added to its assault, attacking Benson’s stomach and forcing the involuntary reaction of retching. Stars swam in front of his eyes, which were watering in addition to the nausea from the overpowering smell. His knees buckled and he could feel the corpse gaining the upper hand, its jaws lowering and closing the distance between it and his flesh. Jacob mustered his strength and fought back with all he had, but he realized it would only be a matter of time now.

 

Suddenly his pushing brought him nearly face first into the creature’s bloodied chest, his gas mask preventing him from coming in actual contact with any of the blood on it, and he rolled off to one side as they hit the ground. Looking up he saw the zombie had been beheaded, and standing on the other side of his now decapitated assailant was Ghost, her blade drawn in her hands.

 

Replacing her weapon into its scabbard over her shoulder, Ghost waved towards the other side of the rooftop. “Over here, on the other side, that’s where the helipad is!”

 

Benson said a silent prayer and nodded, following the woman around the rooftop. Kayla came into view, covered in blood herself but otherwise appearing in one piece. She waved to the pair as they drew nearer. Both Ghost and Kayla appeared to be alright, but surely they’d breathed in some of the fumes. Looking at his bag, which was still flung over his shoulder, Jacob wondered just what their employer had sent them to recover, and whether their mutations granted them some partial or complete immunity to the substance he’d unleashed.

 

“What the hell happened in there?” More zombies spewed out from an open entrance on the far side of the roof, and Ghost opened fire on them without waiting for a response, the noise bringing Jacob’s thoughts back to the present.

 

“I...” Looking down at his hands, trying to stop them from shaking but failing, Benson just shook his head.

 

“Things did not go as planned.”


End file.
